Monday, August 24, 2015

A (Maize and Blue) Nation at Risk: A Review of Endzone by John U. Bacon

Mark Twain,
building off a notion from Lord Byron, once said: "It's no wonder that
truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense." It is in reading a review copy of ENDZONE: The Rise, Fall, and Return of Michigan Football (St. Martin's Press, $27,99, available September 1, 2015) that one is profoundly reminded of this notion. If I had not lived through the era covered
by this book, I would have found some of Bacon's notions preposterous and
downright insulting to my intelligence.
Instead, Bacon fills in the notions of what many of us suspected with details
that somehow are simultaneous gratifying and infuriating.

If you have read Three and Out or Fourth and Long, Bacon's strengths from those books come to the
fore again. Bacon starts, like most good
historians, with a clear argument he sets forth to prove in the book. He proceeds to do this with brief chapters
focused on one singular idea or issue. This
allows Bacon's facts to speak for themselves with a minimum of editorializing. In the end, he presents the actions of Michigan Athletic Director David
Brandon and allows the reader to make their own decisions. What I respect here is that Bacon could
easily allow his version of Brandon to descend into cartoonish supervillainy,
in part because he knows his core audience would lap it up. But he never does. If Brandon comes off poorly in this book, it
is because of what he did and the choices he made, not because Bacon chooses to
piles on. If Brandon seems imperious in
this book, it is because of the manner in which he acted in front of people
willing to call him on it now, not because Bacon casts him in that light
without factual backing. Truthfully, in
reading, I was reminded of a phrase first put forward in 1983's A Nation at Risk. To paraphrase:"If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on
Michigan the mediocre administrative performance that existed in 2010-14, we
might well have viewed it as an act of war."

One of the things
that struck me as I read this is that I am not sure there would be an audience
for a book like this among many college football fan bases. Bacon has acknowledged repeatedly, in
previous books and on Twitter, one of the fundamental notions of Michigan
fandom: There is a segment of this fan base that isn't happy unless it's
unhappy. But I also think this look back
comes at the exact right moment in Michigan's history, needing to wrap up what
went wrong over the last four years and explain what went right in December
2014. It is a public morbidity and
mortality conference for the Brandon administration. (I should also note: Bacon makes a reasonable
effort to track the "tipping points" of various constituencies when
it came to Brandon. There are the ones
you knew, and will get mad about again, and then there are ones you didn't know
about and will make you made all over again.)

If there are
unexpected stars in Endzone, they are
Michigan students. Bacon devotes
considerable time to Will Hagerup, whose personal struggles during the Brandon
Administration make for a compelling story.
Hagerup's story of recovery shows the need for strong mental health
support systems and the wisdom Hagerup won during his time at Michigan is a
great message. My soft spot for Devin
Gardner also wins renewed backing, for the seriousness of his reflections, but
ones seemingly lacking any form of bitterness.
The Central Student Government tandem of Michael Proppe and Bobby Dishell
also make for wonderful, plucky underdog characters who win the day because
they do what Michigan students have done for years: go hard, bring facts, and
never lose faith in your argument if the data is there, even if those in power don't want to hear it. Bacon's ability to forge relationships with
"college kids" is unsurprising, given his work in the college
classroom, but the respect he grants them by letting them tell their story in
their words is a tribute to knowing how to get the best out of someone.

The most difficult
part of Endzone, in my estimation, is
resolving the dichotomy between the student-athlete support for David Brandon
(built on the notion that he viewed them as his core constituency, which may
have been an admirable choice, but not necessarily the wisest course of action)
and his seeming hand-waving dismissals of the non-athlete students, the alumni,
and fans. I respect that there may be no simple or straight forward answer to this, in part because each side has reason to feel like they deserve most favored nation status. Bacon has repeatedly pressed
forward on the idea that when you treat your fans like customers, don't be
surprised if they act like consumers.
This is repeatedly what has happened in Ann Arbor since 2010. The question is, will Jim Hackett
and his eventual successor be able to restore some of what was lost in the
Brandon years. History tells us that if something is broken, it can never be
made whole again, just repaired. The
hiring of Jim Harbaugh is a great first step.
We have not had a new season of Football Saturdays to see if we can go
home again. I have hope that we will,
but it remains to be seen.

In conclusion,
this is an important book for Michigan fans, if not a "fun" book to read. You may literally yell at people (or empty
spaces) when certain notions are revealed.
But it's OK, really, it's cathartic. Read
the book, learn from this chapter of our past, then move forward into the 2015
season in the warming glow of HARBAUGH.

3 comments:

The Baconism about turning fans into consumers/consumers then acting like consumers, eventually divorcing the genre of the passion that makes Saturday football the spectacle it has become, has turned into my favourite turns of a phrase. Great review, I'm anticipating this book even more now!

So there's a lot to say. I'll try my best to be brief, in anticipation of reading the book (I've seen only the excerpts).

1. Rightfully, Bacon has championed the student-athletes themselves. They are mostly superior kids, very hard working, and ordinarily really great students. I expect more of the same.

2. Michigan's student-fans at football games shouldn't get off so easy. For some weird reason, Bobby Dishell comes off as a hero for protesting the general admission seating policy. He's right about that; it was a bad policy. But remember the reason for general admission. It was because the students were so crappy about showing up on time for games, if at all. Ticket prices had nothing to do with that. Students who had already paid for tickets were so casual about them, they just didn't care. Brandon tried to address that. And THAT is on the students, not Brandon.

3. It's pretty freaking ironic, for students to gripe about high ticket prices at the same time they are clamoring for a shiny new $6 million Harbaugh. With the current schedule, a Michigan student can take $185 of their Pell grant money and sell of the MSU and OSU tickets for $250 each. And then write a paper about profits.

4. Dave Brandon -- almost alone in the Michigan administration -- was the guy who stood up to the Free Press in the wake of Stretchgate and the NCAA case. (In which Michigan got pretty much nothing of a penalty for having done pretty much nothing wrong.) Remember "Dave Brandon's pimp hand"? No? They can't seem to remember it at MGoBlog, either. Where they invented it.

5. There are some pretty extreme partisan politics at work on the University of Michigan Board of Regents, and I'll be interested if Bacon was able to tell it all. Exhibit A was the fireworks debacle in the summer of 2014. Brandon's athletic department had a reasonable request; fireworks for the Penn State night game, and also in connection with the Miami University game band show, which featured the band doing the 1812 Overture on military appreciation day. The Regents turned Brandon down, in a public meeting which should have been pro forma, and in the most humiliating way they could concoct. With Regent Larry Deitch claiming that any fireworks in Michigan Stadium might be crazy-stupid dangerous. Deitch must have forgotten that THEY HAD A FIREWORKS SHOW AT THE BIG CHILL HOCKEY GAME in that same Michigan Stadium.

6. I am laughing my effing ass off at the students and alums of our rivals, who sneer at Dave Brandon's alleged commercialism. A bottle of water in Ohio Stadium is the same price as Michigan Stadium. Their seat licenses are effectively more (under a different formula) than Michigan's. And in Ohio Stadium as well as Spartan Stadium, it is wall-to-wall advertising. My favorite in the 'Shoe; Elk & Elk trial lawyers. "Serious lawyers for serious injuries." That's about $4 million in advertising revenue for The Ohio State University's athletics. And Buckeye fans don't care.

HSR 10

(our thanks to @joefedewa)

Mission Statement

"But do let me reiterate the spirit of Michigan.It is based upon a deathless loyalty to Michigan and all her ways; an enthusiasm that makes it second nature for Michigan men to spread the gospel of their university to the world's distant outposts; a conviction that nowhere is there a better university, in any way, than this Michigan of ours."

--Fielding H. Yost upon his retirement as Michigan's athletic director in 1940.